


Vanity

by Blank_Ideas



Series: Human No Longer [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Blood and Gore, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:55:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24340933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blank_Ideas/pseuds/Blank_Ideas
Summary: Monster Elias fic for something that I feel should be more thought about.Kind of like monster Jon but its monster Elias.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas
Series: Human No Longer [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1758571
Comments: 4
Kudos: 45





	Vanity

**Author's Note:**

> The ship is minor but the gore is not

There was a horrible scraping within his head, fingernails carving against his skull as they pulled and tugged at the flesh within, as if emptying out a pumpkin for halloween. It was grating, feeling as the absent fingers so carelessly plucked at the delicate seam of his mind, picking at the metal wire and pulling it up and out, wrenching it away from where it had held him together, so securely nestled within his head. These rebellious hands, cold and sharp pointed, scratched across his body and pinched at the imperfections and vanities he’d tried so hard to correct and treasure over the years. Loose skin, wrinkles, the slight softness that cushioned his stomach, all bared on display, to be observed and seen, to be watched and known. There was no hiding any longer, no staying young and unmalleable. No. Now it was easy to see his flaws as he writhed upon the floor before the throne where his now hollowed corpse sat and wordlessly stared at this fresh old body as Elias, Jonah, he wasn’t sure anymore, struggled to breath beneath the immense pressure of exposure.

“What a scandal.” A voice whispers, barely a passing breeze and once familiar in tone- now a stranger to these ears of his that bled at the sound.  
“Peculiar perhaps, rather effeminate isn’t he? Obscure.”  
“Not right, impure, imperfect and not good enough.”  
“Look at it, writhe and wither, hardly human anymore.”

He gasped out of pain, his own voice unrecognizable as the garbled rasp was torn from his arrid throat and he was forced to curl in on himself, each breath a struggling wheeze as he felt his wind pipes pulse and shift beneath his skin wrongly. He clawed at them with his own fingernails, once pedicured and cared for, now lined with the deep copper brown of old blood, and felt the cartilage defiantly press back and carry on, unbothered by his whimpers and disdain. It hurt. The sensation akin to being set alight as all his nerves endings screamed out their own agonies whilst his muscles stretched and accumulated in new areas and his bones pulled at his skin in new and jarring angles where they definitely should not be, ignorant of the pain it caused him. Sparking hot and jarring, unwavering as it pulled over him in weighty waves, lapping from his feet and ankles and pressuring his body upwards in repetitive strokes that displaced the air from his misshapen lungs and the cohesiveness from his thoughts, mind melding into one long panicked scream.

To be ruined so mercilessly and to be watched as it happened.

Elias struggled, lying on the flat of his stomach as he braced his hands against the cool floor of the panopticon, watching helplessly as he stretched his arms forth noting the completely wrong way his elbow bent, and felt such gracious popping sensations whilst his sinews ground and joints twisted, fingers unravelling from their tips leaving bloody streaks upon the pale floor as new bone and new skin shot forth, wrong and tilted looking with only three digits, a thumb and long dark talons that ground down within the floor and burrowed within stone, squeezing at some vestige of comfort as the meat of his arm split in two in a spray of something two yellowed to be blood by this point, and yet pounced back forth with gaping pores of dark grey that bristled with something further inside that was squirming it’s way back up towards the chilled air and hungry atmosphere. The splitting continued, down his bones and for a brief moment he felt the horrible lurching sensation as his ribcage split apart and all that was tender, all that was soft within him was spilt out upon the floor. He tried to roll back, gain some control over the sensations within his body but found no control as he continued to flail uselessly, helplessly, and felt the gaping maw of his ribcage solidify again, cutting off key organs. For a moment he hoped for death, but instead recoiled and felt a sickly bile rise in his throat as what was missing was soon replaced, he felt as the flesh regenerated like tumours within his hollow chest and felt it breath in life, reforming what he had lost. He wretched, feeling sick.

A minute, an hour- he didn’t care to know anymore- later and he felt solace, a brief moment of respite where he was numb and warm, where the pain felt like nothing in comparison to what had wracked him before, and he could instead lapse into the soothing lull of exhaustion. His body felt so heavy though still quivering amidst his own blood and gore upon the panopticon’s floor. He shifted, feeling his whole body whine as he pulled himself onto his back so that he in turn could stare back up at the focal point above him, the dark patch where the curved ceiling accumulated into a point, a dark pupil while he lingered within the iris surrounding. He couldn’t help the wheeze of bitter laughter as he matched it’s gaze.  
Was he to be betrayed now by his callous god? To be made a monster and known, exposed without the privilege of comfort within his own skin. After all he had done, to be young, to be long lasting, to know what he pleased and never be left behind, was he to be toyed with and molded into an abomination before being discarded or murdered, whichever one was worse?  
He laughed again, splenetic and acidic, with a spiteful anger welling up deep inside of him, beating down the exhaustion that still yet weighted down his heavy limbs.

“Pathetic.” That was all he could say before sensation returned and swallowed him whole.

It crawled this time, from his heaving chest and up, like a fat millipede that covered his chest and soon enough his collar bone, his shoulders, his neck, over his adam’s apple and soon enough smothering his face, each leg poking hollow holes within his skin that he felt blink closed and open with tingling bursts. All at once the world spun about him and he could not breath or taste, or speak, he could barely even think over the immense flood of vision that fluttered open upon his bare skin, hundreds of eyes, some big some small, covering his throat and his upper shoulders, ruining his pretty jaw and sharp cheekbones with vast swathes of beady eyes that hungered to see, to know, to observe. Ravenous as they were they swept the room from his skin and seemed to see through the fibres of wood and stone, seeing beyond into the torrid wasteland beyond, filling his mind with a ceaseless torrent of images and information, all noted and easily filed into the vast archive of his now innumerable memories of which he, as the focal point of consciousness, felt dwarfed by. He tried to twist his neck and press his face within the cold stone of the floor so that at least half of the eyes may be pressed closed and unseeing, giving him at least a moment to accumulate the strength to stay atop the rising water of his mind. But no, it was not his nose that stopped him from cramming his face into the stone with such needy derision but rather the hard point of a peak, curved at the tip and seemingly melded into his features. It had burst forth so quickly that the sudden loss of teeth to grind was more shocking than outright alarming, his finger’s, talons, skated atop the smooth dark brown surface and from an eye that should not be he could spy it’s more than owl shaped quality.  
He was startled, curious even, but that didn’t last long as the realisation that he could no longer speak set in, he opened his mouth, his beak, and tried to push words out, to communicate his rage up towards that pupils born of architecture up in the ceiling, all he could do was push out a harsh heaving sound that set his jaw on edge. The pupil in the ceiling seemed to glint with it’s own twisted amusement. 

Time was dull for a moment as Elias starred up, hapless and unable to retort, entirely at the mercy of the fear before him and, for only the second time in a very long life, he feared what he was becoming. And then the prickling sensation occured, followed by that inexhaustible flush of pain that now wracked his lower half with tremendous urgency and unstoppable need. It swallowed him whole and Elias was lost.  
Beneath his squeezed closed eyelids he saw white, beneath all of the others he saw everything, watched as his pelvis bone bobbed like an iceberg freed and buoyant, knowledge hungry eyes observing as it pulled away, stretching his slender physique into something spindly and weasel like. His legs groaned, audibly mourning their once neat anatomy as they bent inwards, twisting, shrinking, growing, hips rotating and moving of their own accord, making the thought of standing upright a nauseating task. He was forced to watch, forced to stare with tears brimming in his eyes he was no longer sure were his original pair, as he was stripped back of his humanity and reformed into a new shape. A monstrous one, an uglier one. And somehow that knowledge hurt more than being torn apart and pushed back together again.  
He screeched.  
And received not a response.

There was a final touch, one that shot forth and covered his pale sickly skin beneath his torn ragged clothing, and filling in the blank space where eyes or thin hair did not. Feathers. Between shades of dark grey, brown and white, pushing up through the pores of his arms and legs, large plumes decorating his chest as if to add insult to injury. He was vaguely aware of a large fan of them beneath his back and stretching down to his haunches, tail feathers that flared as he hissed his lack of amusement up at that uncaring pupil yet again.  
He was tired and spent beneath it, chest moving up and down but arms too sluggishly and dead by his sides, at this point he didn’t even want to move. Didn’t want to see. To know. What dreadful thing he had become, stripped of his pretty face and charming smile, exposed and pallid, washed out before the thing that had promised him better. How ugly, how defiled, not pretty, not young.

Elias felt old. His bones brittle and his mind too worn out with the unceasing flow of memories and information that flowed within it to really encapsulate any other feeling except old.  
Perhaps pathetic. Yes.  
Old and pathetic. Something that should have been left to gather cobwebs and dust in a creaky attic, not to be touched or admired, he felt as though he were a worthless trinket passed between family members but never truly adored, never truly loved. He felt wasted and decrepit. Like an old military uniform from a nation that no longer exists. A pensioner clinging to his work, to his life, if only to receive some form of validation for it.  
But he wouldn’t, would he? No. He was now the stuffed bear of a child turned a century old, left out within the wood’s of a grandparent’s cottage where the fox would soon tear him apart and choke upon his cotton insides, claiming him and thinking him a rabbit. He would die. Alone and filthy.  
He wanted to die. Better that than to watch himself be left behind.

Elias Bouchard splays out the limbs that are no longer his and lets out a sob.  
Never having been the most beautiful crier, he is distinctly aware about how odd and disgusting he must seem now, his face feels too tight and too full to truly express any emotion especially with the hardness of his keratin beak only creating a scraping sound rather then the thin line his lips always pressed into as he tried to hold some form of grace and not give into hard high pitch breathes that spoke volumes of his complete despair. His eyes crinkled though, he felt them squeeze shut even if it had no effect and the sparse folds of skin between them certainly dampened with the salty water of real, human tears. Letting out such a piteous sound, he willed his wretched form still, releasing only tears of both anger and deep, encumbering sadness to punctuate mournful gasps. He sobbed.  
Softly, quietly and resigned himself to motionlessness.  
To death hopefully.

“Feeling dramatic today are we?” The softened mumble of one who cushioned his chin upon the meat of his palm when he sat, elbow on knee and back end parked upon the mighty steps that lead up to the throne where he had once sat so grandly and now could only cower before.

Elias wanted to call the man ignorant, an idiot as he always did, but the moment his beak rasped open he clamped it shut instead looking up to glare at his white haired sailor.  
Peter Lukas sat there, translucent and chuckling at his irritated expression, seemingly to genuinely care as little as physically possible about Elias’s problem. Though really, what did the dead have to worry about?

“You know Elias, considering this is everything you’ve worked towards, you’re being rather ungrateful.” Peter hummed, face a soft and smug smile as if basking in the summer sun rather than watching his husband be so horrifically disfigured. “Ex-husband, you’re a widower. Besides that you’ve never exactly been a looker.”

Elias hissed, struggling to sling his weary body onto it’s stomach again in order to begin the process of picking himself back up. Bracing himself upon his forearms his whole body shook, struggling beneath his fatigue as it pushed down upon him while he tried to pull up knees beneath him that no longer truly existed. He dropped, letting out a pained whine as a shoulder blade moved and popped from a delicate place where it absolutely should not have been in the first place.

“I’m a bastard, I know. I’m sure you’d choke me now if you could- why don’t you?” Dead or not, Elias could feel Peter’s eyes upon him, having memorised they crinkled around the edges as they delighted in seeing him struggle.

Elias’s feeble body continued to shake as he straightened his back and pushed himself up onto his palms, the flats of his talons, and let out a pained grunt, feeling tail feathers snap from bad angles and tear from where they’d been caught beneath his legs. He gasped as he found himself on his feet though wobbling unsteadily. There was a cool hand upon his shoulder, another at his waist, moving in time to steady him, comforting though useless all the same.

“Peter I-” And he was alone again.

No more than two delusions at once seemed.


End file.
